The Unfinished Song - Book 6: Blood (11 page)

“A brave man is stronger; a funny man lives longer,” quipped Svego.

“Behaving like a fool wasn’t a great stretch for Svego.”

“Don’t let Gremo’s humility fool you. He’s funnier than fish.”

“Are fish known for being funny?”

“They must be,” said Svego. “Whenever I cook fish for dinner, Gremo says, ‘This tastes funny.’”

Gremo shook his head. “I should warn you that if you pose as a clown, you’ll be tortured day after day by Svego’s lousy jokes. I wouldn’t blame you if choose a less painful path, like being eaten alive by raptors.”

“It’s perfect,” said Dindi. “Except for the part where I’m not funny.”

“How is life treating you?” asked Svego. “Well or not so well?”

“Not so well.”

“Then you’re halfway there. Most of funny is misery. Come with us, and we’ll teach you a few moves.”

Umbral had no time to question his good fortune in having a rope dangling over the edge of the cliff until he was half way to…what? He glanced down and saw a large cage made from bones and ropes. There were people inside, staring up at him in astonishment.

At least he knew where he was now. The cages were hung on ropes dangling over the rocky overhang of the cliff. Past the outcrop, the cliff was a tower of perpendicular stone for several hundred spans straight down. Even if Umbral could swing the cage to the wall, jump to the rock and hold on, it would be a long, perilous climb to the ground.

Above, something joggled the rope. He jerked his head up.

You’ve got to be kidding me
.

Finnadro was climbing down after him.

Hand under hand, Umbral descended faster. The amount of rope separating them increased, which was good, until Finnadro
let go of the rope
.

Finnadro dropped on him, which ripped Umbral off the rope too. Both men plummeted.

You crazy muck!
Umbral raged inside as they fell. He had mere seconds to flip and angle his body to alter his fall just enough…

Just enough!

His hands slammed hard against wood and he clutched hard, despite ripped nails and straining biceps. The bone was slippery; the knots tying them together offered a better grip. Umbral wriggled up the side of the cage while Finnadro fell past him into the abyss below.

Farewell, old enemy.

Umbral didn’t rejoice, but his relief was profound. Now all he had to do was get off this cage. Maybe the other captives would help him.

Ha
. The captives had a different idea.

The men inside began to shove and poke him, trying their damnedest to dislodge him and send him toppling after Finnadro.

Talons snatched Finnadro out of the air.

A Raptor had saved him from certain death. The Raptor circled around the side of the mountain. Finnadro tried to catch sight of another man falling, but his vision was still limited, a blur of light and shadow. Besides, it all swept by so fast. He heard only one set of flapping wings, however. There was no other Raptor to save the Deathsworn.

The Raptor alighted in a yard in the main, western settlement. Finnadro saw the blurry hulk of the bird shift and become a smaller, man-sized blur. He recognized Amdra’s sharp questions and Hawk’s deep responses.

“Thank you for saving my life,” he said to them. “But you must return me to the other mountain. I must hunt the Deathsworn.”

“No one grabbed
him
from the air. He’s dead.”

“We thought he was dead before, too.”

One of the shadows stood in front of him and air fluttered on his cheek.

“How many fingers do you see?”

“Three?”

“You can’t see anything.”

“I see enough.” He wondered if his eyes would recover.

“You need a Healer.”

He argued, but Hawk’s soft, deep voice stopped him: “She already left.”

Finnadro growled. He paced the
yard, tripped over something, almost fell. Hawk caught him and led him from the indistinguishable glare of the yard to the indistinguishable gloom inside a lodge. Finnadro fumed, but he did not want to humiliate himself by tripping a second time, so he sat on a bed mat, stiffly, trying to act as though this was what he had chosen to do, not something he did because he was sightless and helpless.

A bowl found his hands.

“It’s water,” said Hawk.

Finnadro wanted to fling it away. Was this how Hawk had felt earlier about his pity? Rudeness would have been a worse weakness, so Finnadro sipped. As soon as the water touched his cracked lips, he realized he was parched. He drank the whole bowl and felt grateful rather than resentful after all.

“Thank you,” he said, but no one replied. Hawk had left him alone.

It seemed a long time he stewed in a pot of unpleasant thoughts: fury that the Deathsworn might still be alive, fear for his eyes (he felt he had never valued them until this moment), frustration with his constant, towering inadequacy. Once again, he had let the Deathsworn best him. He was not worthy of the Green Lady or of his Shining Name. What use would she have of a blind Henchman?

Footsteps crunched in the yard, then padded softly into the room. The Healer was just another blur, but this blur came with hands that were soft and feminine, and a pleasant smell. She asked him questions about the light which had blinded him, and how much he could see now. She gave him a salve to rub into his eyes and did a dance with feathers, which she brushed around his aura. She gave him something nasty to drink and insisted he finish every drop.

“Your sight will return…”

He jumped to his feet.

“But you must rest…”

She pushed him back down.

“…
for a day at least.”

Impossible. But Finnadro knew how bossy Healers were, so he smiled and nodded. As soon as she was out of the room, he would resume his search.

“And I know Zavaedies like you never listen to Healers like me,” she continued primly, “So I’ve given you a sleeping draught to ensure that you
do
rest.”

She pushed his shoulders back against the sleeping roll. His whole body felt heavy, and he remembered nothing else.

Vio fastened his robe and lifted his headdress from the niche in the wall where it usually rested. He would ride through the city in the full regalia of a chieftain, though he would not wear this outfit again until he reached the foot of the cloven mountain of Cliffedge.

“Vio, have you lost your wits?” a voice asked harshly from the doorway to the balcony of Vio’s adobe manse. “Or just your ethics?”

Scowling, Vio turned to face his old friend Danumoro. “If you want to challenge me to a fight, you will have to wait. I have another challenger to answer first. He happens to have an army, so I must bring one too.”

“And that means war,” said Danumoro.

“Yes, Danu.”

Danumoro wore simple legwals and a mantle quilted with yellow beads and porcupine quills. No one would guess from his unassuming attire that he was an eminent Healer, originally from Yellow Bear, and a stout fighter too, despite his distaste for violence.

“I thought you no longer thirsted for blood,” Danu said.

“I never thirsted for it.”

“Then do not drive two great tribes to war. The days of the Bone Whistler are over.”

“The days of the Bone Whistler will not be over until the Bone Whistler is dead.”

“He
is
dead,” said Danu, “as far as anyone knows or cares. What good can come of confronting him now?”

“You dare ask me that?” growled Vio.

“We will find a way to get Vessia back without wasting thousands of lives to do it. She would be the first to tell you that. I know the anger in your heart, Vio, but please! Do not unleash the blooded spear.”

Vio donned the headdress, shifting the bulk until it inflicted the least discomfort. The band pinched his temple, making his
head ache. The weight was a good reminder of the responsibility he would carry on this journey.

Danumoro made a sound deep in his throat. He said bitterly, “You care nothing for what I say. Am I not even your friend? Do my years here mean nothing to you? You won’t even consider my words!”

Vio went to stand before him and placed his hand on his shoulder. “Danu, I care so much for what you say, and know you so well, that I considered your words before you even said them.”

“But you will still take the blooded spear to Orange Canyon,” Danu accused, his lips pinched together. “You will still destroy two tribes and sacrifice thousands of young warriors for your pride.”

“Is that what you think this is about?” Rage stirred inside, and Vio did not want to harm his friend. Vio pointed past the balcony, leashing his temper, though his words were hot and furious. “
Get out!
I will not have your doubts and your fears clouding my path. I need friends who will not question me!”

“Will you exile me, Vio?” scoffed Danu. “As you exiled your own son?”

Vio’s rage incandesced hot and bright, like a forest fire that had burned quietly in the underbrush suddenly catching on the taller trees. Danumoro paled and stepped back, aware he had gone too far. He turned on his heel and departed. Vio punched the wall.

As soon as Danu was gone, Vio’s rage seeped away into weariness; the bruise on his knuckles and a web of cracks in the plaster remained as trivial monuments to his temper. At least it had not come to blows. In his younger years, he might have hit his friend, or worse. How much of the fabled wisdom of age was simply a symptom of fatigue?

He wished he had managed a better farewell to his friend.

A crowd thronged the dusty streets when Vio and his warriors, mounted on horses which they controlled with hoops, rode out of the tribehold. The onlookers crooned his titles as he passed.
The Maze Zavaedi. The War Chief of Rainbow Labyrinth tribe
. Undertones abounded with other rumors too:
The Blooded Spear. War. Revenge
.

There was another name they did not whisper, did not guess, but which Vio heard in his mind, hissed with loathing and dread.

The Bone Whistler
.

The Bone Whistler had ruled the Rainbow Labyrinth for fourteen years, driving it to war, waste, and ruination, before Vio had defied his own master and chased the Bone Whistler out of the tribehold. Unfortunately, the Bone Whistler, despite all the harm he had caused, had also raised the Morvae to a high status they had never enjoyed before. Many Morvae remained loyal to him out of gratitude, and some had even fled with him to Orange Canyon. There, under a new name, he had become War Chief again, of a new people. The Morvae knew only that the Great One honored the legacy of the Bone Whistler, never guessing how literally that was true.

For more than twenty years, Vio and his former lord had kept an uneasy truce. Vio enjoyed the reputation of having killed the tyrant. He had no more wish to let it be known that the Bone Whistler still lived than the Bone Whistler himself. The man is old, Vio had reasoned. He has to die sooner or later. Real peace will come after his death. In the meantime, even an uneasy truce was preferable to war.

Wasn’t it?

Now Vio wondered if he had not miscalculated. Badly.

The Bone Whistler’s tribal totems may have changed, but not the color of his ambition. He had kidnapped Vessia, Vio’s wife, and now held her prisoner in his impenetrable stronghold on the summit of a mountain.

Half of the crowd cheered Vio. The other half looked sullen. Though only Tavaedies could be Imorvae or Morvae, the division between the two rival warrior dancers divided the entire tribehold. Every clan, every family, every newborn aurochs calf mewling in its kraal, cleaved to one side or another.

This was the real reason Vio had never dared assault Orange Canyon tribe to wrest his rival away from his new perch. How many of his own people would follow him into battle—and how many would stab him in the back as he rode away? How many clans would answer his call to war?

Vio glanced to the side, where his nephew rode on a roan mare beside him. Zumo was the grandson of the Bone Whistler. Zumo’s sister had been the tool used to capture Vessia. Zumo claimed he had tried to prevent that, but Vio didn’t trust the boy. Couldn’t afford to. The chances were much greater that Zumo was working for his grandfather, just as his sister was.

Zumo caught his gaze and smiled weakly, a gesture of appeasement.

Vio did not return the smile.

He was taking Zumo with him on this venture for one reason only. He did not dare leave him behind to start a civil war.

They reached the gate to the tribehold, where the immense ramp to the mesa met the adobe wall. Here septs of Runners knelt on the ground before him, pledging their loyalty and speed. One by one, they each came to him, holding a spear tip forward.

Vio sliced his forearm on the tip of each spear.

“Behold!” he said aloud to the Runners and to his people gathered around him and to his enemies in their distant mountain fastness, “the Orange Canyon tribe has wronged me by stealing my wife. By shaming me, they have shamed all our people. Will I walk to war alone? Or will you be with me?”